Planning Your Emergency
There are a few significant concepts that follow us throughout our flying careers. These concepts pertain to us whether we are paid to fly or not and whether we fly a Transport Category or Light Sport Aircraft. At the core of all of pilots, rests a common foundation. One very important concept ingrained in all pilots, from day one to retirement, is to “stay ahead of the airplane.” Aeronautical Decision making, as the FAA has recently begun to promote, begins on the ground and continues in the air. A pilot with good Situational Awareness is ahead of the airplane and therefore potentially safer than one who is not ahead. The pilot questions his or her surroundings constantly in order to find solutions to problems or prevent them. This includes being ready for emergencies. When emergency situations do occur you want to have a plan already in place as opposed to being forced into developing a plan under stress. The time to plan for an urgent or distress situation is before one happens! This is why ADM begins on the ground. Remember the Aviate, Navigate Communicate concept from back in the day? This concept applies not only to normal operations but to times of distress or urgency. Such times are great to utilize ANC. ANC works in every airplane!
AVIATE: One element to “aviating” begins on the ground. Brainstorm as to what failures or circumstances would require your absolute attention, to the point that you would have to act from memory…initially. Find out what an Emergency is for you AS WELL AS your airplane. Memory or Immediate Action Items may already exist in your POH or you may need to develop them yourself. Any occurrence that requires VERY timely action is an emergency. Any occurrence that requires LESS timely action, MAY be an emergency. Point is, find out now before its too late and you wind up behind the airplane. A few suggestions which you could use a basis for developing your own list of Memory/Immediate Action and EMERGENCY/ABNORMAL checklist items include: ENGINE FIRE/SEVERE DAMAGE, CABIN FIRE/SMOKE, TRIM RUNAWAYS, RAPID DEPRESSURIAZATION, EMERGENCY DESCENT, ABORTED TAKEOFF, UNCOMMANDED SWERVING ON THE GROUND.
Memory items are done initially with no reference to a printed checklist. Whatever you develop in your list that deals with Emergency Memory Items need not be FAA approved. After all, you are ultimately training yourself how to think under stress. The FAA hasn’t regulated that yet, have they? Whatever you do develop from memory, should always be backed up by an actual checklist, and that’s where regulation (See FAA AC….) may come into play. Often the checklist reminds you of the memory items and then provides other “house cleaning” material. So to review, memory items require you to act from memory and then confirm what you have done with a checklist, a do then read. If you have any questions contact your local FSDO. Be advised, even immediate Memory Action items don’t need to be done immediately, just in a timely fashion. The first thing I always try to remind myself with regards to an emergency is to just STOP. Think about what I have going on and then decide how I am going to solve my problem. Memory items do not have a time limit. The only true memory/immediate action item is to fly the airplane! One last comment about memory items, checklists and your review of abnormal operations before we proceed. Think of how much you’ll learn about your airplane by accomplishing this exercise. Greater knowledge helps you to stay ahead of the airplane, too!
NAVIGATE: Among other things, navigating in this case means finding an airport suitable to your needs. What exactly is your problem? Is it something that requires use of your newly developed Memory Items? If so, that could qualify as an emergency and a suitable airport could be anything, including a field! While a use of a Memory Item is not the sole criteria to declaring an emergency, its use certainly implies urgent or distress conditions. DO NOT think about maintenance on the airport you choose! A mechanic can always drive to where you put your plane down. That is, if you put it down in one piece. The longer you “push” your problem to a cushy airport, the greater the potential for problems, potentially catastrophic. Come to think, does keeping that rough running, hot engine do any good? Put the airplane down sooner rather than later.
In previous articles we have discussed numerous issues related to Crash, Fire and Rescue services. Recall that mandated ARFF protection may not be full-time. Therefore, if you were to base your airport selection on your knowledge of ARFF at a particular airport, you may be wasting your time. You may find the service is only during air carrier operations, which you are not. Now doesn’t that single 2,500 foot strip 5 miles at your 6 O’clock look a whole lot better? This is not a slight on ARFF crews or airport management. It is a real world observation that it is nearly impossible for a pilot to know all the peculiarities of ARFF services at all the airports he or she might fly over. In a sense, every single fire department in the country is a Crash & Rescue facility.
The main point about navigating during an emergency or abnormal situation is to consider how urgent your need to land is at any given time. All the other pieces, maintenance and Fire, Rescue will all fall into place later on and are secondary to your primary task, flying the airplane. The ground is your safe haven.
COMMUNICATE: While communication is the last step in ANC, it is by no means the least important. It is the final step because it works best as a summary of the events that have unfolded. It makes sense to communicate only after you have determined you have a problem and what you intend to about it. Plus, you have time to sort out your ideas and issues and ultimately think before you speak.
In an Emergency or Abnormal situation, the people you will communicate with are:
Passengers: It is our duty as pilots to provide an explanation of what sort of problem is occurring. It is up to you to keep your briefing truthful, concise and not overly technical…the highpoints if you will. An overly technical description is just as bad as no information at all. It is our job, as pilots, to find the happy medium. One pneumonic oft used by the airlines to form the back-bone of this briefing for cabin crew that you could use for your passengers is T-E-S-T:
T- Type of emergency. What’s going on?
E- Evacuation. Will you evacuate? If so, what exits will we use?
S- Signal for the evacuation will be “Evacuate, Evacuate” over
the PA with a reminder of what side of the airplane to use.
T- Time that it will take to return.
Remember too that you are required to “pre-brief” passengers on various aspects of your aircraft prior to your flight. If you did a thorough briefing according to Part 91 than it might pay off in huge dividends during an emergency.
Air Traffic Control: It is important that information about your emergency be shared with Air Traffic Control. Air Traffic Control can provide you with a great deal of assistance. They can help you find the nearest airport. They can clear vast amounts of airspace for you as you descend towards an emergency landing and notify Crash-Fire-Rescue. The key to maximizing available help is to get the word out early. A controller has a lot to do during this time and your emergency could be very stressful to them as well. The controller’s main priority is airspace and separation of air traffic…not notifying Emergency Services. For this reason, it can not be stressed enough to get the word out early. Do you get VFR advisories? If not, you should. Help is literally a finger-tip away in an emergency. If you are non-IFR rated, you would be wise to file a VFR flight plan. You know, that thing that activates Search and Rescue if you don’t show up after a period of time? If you are unable VFR advisories or you do get advisories and radar service was terminated, you have at least a guarantee that someone will come looking for you…eventually, which is better than never!
Fire Rescue: We have discussed previously the inabilities of Rescue crews to converse directly with the pilot of an emergency aircraft. These inabilities are even more crucial to know when you are inbound to a Non-Towered, non Part 139 (“General Aviation Airport.”) In this situation, it is possible that the information Rescue crews receive is third, fourth or even fifth party. If the circumstances of your emergency permit, be sure to attempt contact with Rescue crews when on final approach to give them information that they could use to help you out.
CONCLUSION
The more you prepare for a flight before you actually take it, the more ahead of the airplane you will be. This will directly relate to the overall safety of the flight. Preparing for an emergency situation before you find yourself in one, is part of this preflight process. Taking to heart the above, but humble suggestions, will potentially pay great dividends. You can consider such to be a form of personal recurrent training. Such will not only give you a better understanding of yourself and your aircraft but of what you can do in an emergency. Think about it now. While you still have the chance.
Anthony C. Lorenti, Captain.
ATP.TYPE EMB-145,ATR 42/72
Certificated Flight Instructor. SEL, MEL.
South Meriden Vol. Fire Department, Firefighter II, EMT